1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to heat shields applied directly to uncovered skin, in particular the face, hands, and other body parts that may not be clothed such as arms, legs, or torso.
2. Overview
There is a need for hunters and soldiers to completely camouflage themselves to avoid detection. Both hunters and soldiers have successfully used camouflaged clothing and hats to camouflage most of their bodies and their equipment; however, for various reasons it is not practical to cover the face, which contains the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, or sometimes the hands, arms, legs, and torso. The lack of comfortable, practical camouflage for the uncovered skin such as the face, ears, hands, and so forth results in unwanted detection by prey or enemies.
There is a need for hunters, soldiers, actors, sports fanatics, and costume wearers to apply one of many predetermined color patterns to their skin, in particular, their face, hands and other body parts that may not be clothed such as arms, legs, or torso. There is also a need for makers of camouflage patterns to create market awareness for their particular patterns.
There is a need for soldiers, firemen, glass blowers, metal workers, and others in occupations that are at high risk of fire, bombs and other high heat issues to wear heat protective clothing. Soldiers, for example, must wear special heat protective clothing while in the field outside of the safe areas because they are exposed to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as roadside bombs that can reach temperatures of up to several thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Prior Art
Development of camouflage patterns, especially in the hunting market has become a relatively large and competitive business. Various brands of camouflage designs such as Mossy Oak, Real Tree, and Predator, compete to have their camouflage patterns adopted for use in hunting clothing and equipment.
Different methods and devices have been developed in an attempt to camouflage uncovered skin. These include the use of face paint, or makeup, and fabric masks, or netting.
Face paint may come in the form of small bottles, tubes, or sticks. Makeup kits with multiple partitions and two sided sticks are commonly used to provide two or more camouflage colors. However the design must be drawn from scratch by hand, usually by the wearer on the wearer's own face. Face paint and makeup have several disadvantages, including being odorous, greasy, heavy, hot, sticky, messy, imprecise, time-consuming to apply and remove, and difficult to remove. When hunting, scent is a major concern because prey can detect the odor from the face paint. Face paint and makeup is messy and can damage expensive clothing or equipment. Because it is greasy, heavy, hot and sticky it is uncomfortable to wear. It is difficult to apply and imprecise in its results.
Face concealment devices include various fabric masks, buffs, neck sleeves, and camouflaged netting designed to hang from a hat or wrap around the head. Conventional face concealment devices have several disadvantages, including being heavy, hot, obstructive, disruptive, and expensive. A fabric mask for example may block a hunter's vision, catch on branches, or disrupt the movement of a bow string. A thick fabric covering the ears distorts the hearing of the wearer.
More recently, some have attempted to apply camouflage to various portions of the face with pieces of vinyl with reusable adhesive. These have several disadvantages including being uncomfortable, non-breathable, hot, obstructive and disruptive.
Although they have not been used previously as skin camouflage, temporary tattoos are used in a different field for other purposes. Temporary tattoos typically contain small images such as a miniature flag or a small butterfly. A temporary tattoo is made by printing one or more small images on a special backing paper or film that is processed with multiple layers of coating. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,169,169. Typically, the first layer applied to the backing is a sizing agent, the second layer is a non-stick silicon release coating, and the third layer is a transfer film composed of gelatin or other polymeric material. The pigments are printed on the transfer film. With a decal-style temporary tattoo, the paper is moistened to release the transfer film, which may be applied to the skin.
Temporary tattoos are conventionally applied to relatively flat, small areas on the cheeks, arms, legs, or back, but have not been used to cover large, uneven surfaces of the body such as the entire face or hands and fingers.
More recently waterless tattoos have been developed which place the pigment in a translucent adhesive substrate. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,594,276. The adhesive substrate has peel off paper on one side which when removed allows the adhesive side to be attached to the skin. The backing can be plastic film that is removed after the adhesive substrate has been pressed on the skin.
What is needed is a means of applying one of many predetermined camouflaged patterns to uncovered skin, in particular the face, hands, and other body parts that may not be clothed such as arms, legs, or torso, without being, odorous, greasy, heavy, hot, sticky, messy, imprecise, time-consuming to apply and remove, difficult to remove, obstructive, disruptive, or expensive.
What is needed is a means of applying skin heat protection that is flexible, breathable, sweat-through, and comfortable to uncovered skin, in particular the face, hands, and other body parts that may not be clothed such as arms, legs, or torso, without being, odorous, greasy, heavy, hot, sticky, messy, imprecise, time-consuming to apply and remove, difficult to remove, obstructive, disruptive, or expensive.